How to get rid of a mattress in Pittsburgh

The short answer

If you live inside the City of Pittsburgh, a mattress can go out with your regular trash as one of your two bulk items per week, set out no earlier than 6 p.m. the night before and no later than 6 a.m. on collection day. If the mattress and box spring both have to go, that is your whole weekly allowance. If you would rather not carry it down the steps yourself, JunkRabbit takes a twin for $82, a full for $94, a queen for $103, a king for $114 and a mattress and box spring set for $143.

Route one: the City curb, done properly

The City's bulk program lists mattresses and box springs among the items it accepts at the curb with your regular refuse pick-up. It is free, and for a single mattress it is a perfectly good answer. The catch is the limit. The City caps bulk at two items a week, and a mattress plus its box spring counts as two. If you are also getting rid of the bed frame, that piece waits another week. The timing window matters too. Putting a mattress out at noon the day before is outside the 6 p.m. rule, and a mattress sitting on a sidewalk for a day invites complaints. Wrap it in a plastic mattress bag if rain or snow is in the forecast, because a soaked mattress is heavy and miserable to move. Check your collection day before you haul anything down. And remember the curb is the end of the job, not the start: you still have to get it out of the bedroom, down the stairs and out the front door yourself.

If your mailing address says Pittsburgh but you are not in the City

This trips people up constantly. Allegheny County has 130 municipalities, and each borough and township contracts its own trash hauler. Plenty of addresses that say "Pittsburgh, PA" on the envelope sit in suburbs such as Baldwin, Brentwood, Penn Hills, Upper St. Clair or Mt. Lebanon. The City's two-item rule does not apply to them. Mt. Lebanon, for example, says its contractor accepts furniture, appliances and household goods curbside, set out after 6 p.m. the evening before. Other boroughs have their own rules, and some ask you to schedule large items. The only reliable answer is your own municipality's public works or garbage page. If your borough's rule is generous, use it. If it requires a call, a special collection or a long wait, that is where a scheduled pickup starts to make sense. JunkRabbit charges the same flat price whichever side of the City line you live on.

Can you donate or reuse it?

Sometimes, but plan on it being harder than donating a dresser. A used mattress is a hygiene question for any reuse organization, and many will not take one at all. The Habitat for Humanity ReStore in the Swissvale Shopping Center lists appliances, furniture, building materials and décor among the things it accepts, and it offers free pickup for donations. Call before assuming a used mattress fits their rules. A mattress that is nearly new, still clean and has no stains has the best chance anywhere. A mattress that has been in a damp basement, has sagged in the middle or has any sign of bed bugs should not be offered to anyone. When we pick one up, we try to donate usable items when local charities accept them, and we recycle whatever we can. We will not promise a used mattress a second life, because that decision belongs to whoever receives it.

The carry is the real work here

Pittsburgh's housing makes mattresses awkward. The City's median home was built in 1942, and a lot of the stock is rowhouses and doubles with narrow, turning staircases. A king mattress does not bend around a landing in a Bloomfield frame rowhouse, and a box spring does not bend at all. On the South Side Slopes, Mt. Washington, Troy Hill or Polish Hill, the trip does not end at the front door, because the street can be a flight of public steps away. The City has 800 sets of public stairways, and many houses are reached only by steps. In winter those steps get slippy, and carrying a queen mattress down icy treads is how people get hurt. A crew carrying it out is not a luxury in that situation. With JunkRabbit the price is the same from a ground-floor bedroom or a third-floor attic room, with no stairs fee and no extra charge for the walk from the door to the truck.

Flat prices for a mattress and the rest of the bed

A queen mattress and a metal frame is $103 + $68 = $171. A full bed, meaning a set, frame and headboard, is $143 + $68 + $57 = $268. Two twin mattresses from a kids' room come to $82 + $82 = $164. The order minimum is $100, so a single twin on its own is billed at the $100 minimum. Prices are shown before you book and only change if you approve the change.

Timing it around Pittsburgh's calendar

Mattresses pile up at predictable times here. Late summer and May are student turnover around Oakland, Shadyside, the South Side and Polish Hill, when Pitt, CMU, Duquesne, Carlow, Chatham and Point Park leases change hands. Spring is redd-up season, when basements and spare rooms get cleared after winter. January brings a post-holiday decluttering bump, usually when someone has just bought a new bed. If you book with JunkRabbit by 4 PM, same-day pickup is available, and you choose a 2-hour arrival window. We work 7 days a week from 8am to midnight, so an evening slot after work is normal. In winter, a morning window on a hillside street is often the easier carry once the steps have been salted. Snap a photo of the mattress where it sits, note the floor and any outside steps, and you get the flat price before anyone drives over.

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